


Red Velvet

by ladyshadowdrake



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Crack, Gen, Humor, Prank War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21639565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyshadowdrake/pseuds/ladyshadowdrake
Summary: Nick Fury wakes up to an apartment that has been infiltrated, every speaker he comes into contact with blaring the Song that Never Ends, and he knows exactly who did it.
Relationships: Nick Fury & Natasha Romanov
Comments: 9
Kudos: 93





	Red Velvet

Red Velvet

Nicholas Fury was accustomed to his phone ringing at 3 am. He’d only been asleep for an hour and a half, but the world’s emergencies didn’t pay any mind to his fucked up sleep schedule. He rolled over, grabbed the phone and clicked it on without opening his eyes. He made a noise that sounded vague and noncommittal when he was awake, but like a snarling tiger when he’d been woken. It paid to put the fear of God and Fury into the hearts of his subordinates.

“Is this Mr. Hickles?” the unfamiliar voice asked brightly.

Nick peeled an eye open and moved the phone so he could see the display. He peered at it through the glare, immediately placing the area code as Los Angeles, but he didn’t remember the code name, and it wasn’t one of his aliases. He put the phone back to his ear. “Who the hell is this?”

“My name is James, sir, and I’m calling from Media Distribution Solutions with a special offer for your business practice! We would like to make you a special offer of five magazine or journal subscriptions for a mere penny, Mr. Hickles –”

Nick disconnected the line and immediately dialed the office. “Director Fu –”

“One of ya’ll fucked up,” Nick said succinctly. “Get me a new phone by the time I make it into the office.”

“Yes, sir!” the startled night shift operator gulped. Nick made an unimpressed humming noise and ended the call. He glared at the phone for good measure and dropped it to his bedside table, rolled over, and buried his face in his pillow once more.

It took twelve minutes and seventeen seconds for the phone to ring again. Nick glared at it. He could turn it off, but it could just as easily be a field agent reporting that Doomsday is Here as James from Media Distribution Solutions.

“Mr. Hinesworth?” a different cheerful voice asked when he picked up the line.

“Do you motherfuckers realize that it is three in the goddamned morning?” Nick snarled. Telemarketers were some of his least favorite people and he didn’t even bother to be polite to people he _liked_ at three in the morning.

“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry Mr. Hinseworth! I’ll update that in my system right away! While we’re on the line, would you like to hear more about a special offer from Medical Weightloss Management Systems?”

He hung up the phone and called the office again. “Reroute all my calls to Tony Stark.”

“… Tony Stark, sir?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir!”

Nick smirked at the phone, sent Stark a text emoji of a middle finger, and went back to sleep.

~*~

At 5:12, Nick climbed out of the shower, toweled down, and made his way around his room. He took a black shirt, black cargo pants, and belt off their respective hangers and laid them out neatly on his bed. He collected his tags from the tray on top of his dresser, running his thumb over the simple gold band resting on the chain once before pulling them over his head. He took a pair of neatly folded black socks out of the second drawer, and then opened the top drawer to find it empty.

Nick stared at the empty drawer for three breaths. He closed the drawer, and then opened it again. Still empty. “You are fucking kidding me right now,” he said to the empty underwear drawer which, just yesterday, contained twelve pairs of neatly folded black Puma boxer-briefs.

Dropping the socks on the bed, Nick grabbed the Sig P238 from it hidden holster in the empty space above the top drawer. He checked it automatically – clip, chamber, safety- and wrapped his hands around it, pointing it to the floor. Moving through the apartment like it was new territory, Nick checked every shadow, every corner, every nook that a person could conceivably hide in. With Clint Barton and Natasha Romanov on his payroll, he’d learned that there were a lot of nooks.

The doors were all locked and unmolested, the windows locked from the inside, all of his counter measures and booby traps still in place. Not putting the gun down, he stopped at the fridge to grab the orange juice carton and found a neon pink PostIt note with a smiley face drawn in thick black marker in the place of his orange juice. Nick glared at it, but didn’t touch it. He doubted anyone who could break into his home _while he was in it_ would be stupid enough to leave fingerprints, but people had done stupider shit before.

Calling into the office for a third time, Nick ordered, “I want a full forensics team at my place in ten minutes.” He moved the phone away from his ear, stopped, and put it back. “And someone stop at Macy’s. Puma boxer-briefs, size medium, black.”

“Sir?” the agent asked uncertainly.

“Did I stutter?” Nick snarled, “Puma boxer-briefs, size medium, black. Ten minutes.” He hung up and fetched a pair of running pants. As satisfying as the idea of answering the door naked might have been, he didn’t need the whole office talking about his tattoos the next day.

~*~

His apartment was swept for fingerprints, fibers, explosives, and traps. When they found nothing, he made them do it again. When they still found nothing, he watched them perform a full sweep of his car, and had the computer nerds run a remote scan of the computer system. It all seemed normal until he turned on his playlist and it blasted “This is the Song that Never Ends.”

“Turn it off!” Nick snapped, slamming the vehicle to a halt ten feet from his parking spot.

“This is the song that never ends,” the computer informed him helpfully.

“I know what fucking song it is! Turn it _off_!”

“This is the song that never ends.”

“God _damnit_ , music _off!_ ”

“This is the song that never ends.”

Flinging his seatbelt off, Nick threw himself out of the vehicle. The forensic techs, loading their equipment into the van, stared at him like he’d grown another head. Nick wasn’t completely sure he _hadn’t_ grown another head.

“Out,” he ordered the startled driver. The woman nearly tripped getting herself out of the driver’s seat. He tossed her his keys. “Have it check again, get it back to the office. Close the back!” He heard the cargo doors slam, turned the engine over, and motioned sharply for the wide-eyed driver to get the hell out of his way. She scrambled up to the sidewalk and Nick pulled the van away from the curb.

Pushing the Bluetooth button on the steering wheel, Nick ordered, “Call the office.”

_“-Ome people started singing without knowing it was –”_

“The _hell_ kind of bullshit?” Nick smashed the power button on the radio. It turned off. He flicked his blinker to get onto the main street.

“ _Forever just because –_ ”

He smashed the power button again, and made a right turn without the blinker, and turned the AC on.

“ _This is the song that never –”_

Snarling, Nick turned the volume down. It was blessedly quiet the rest of the way to the office. He pulled up to the guard post and rolled the window down to show his ID.

“ _AND IT GOES ON AND ON MY FRIEND!”_ the speakers blared at damn near top volume. The guard jumped, hand going automatically to his firearm, his partner rushing out of the guardhouse. Nick glared at the radio. If the world were fair, his one good eye would have come equipped with lasers. He turned the glare on the guards, and they were quick to raise the arm and hand his ID back. He didn’t bother trying to turn the music off or roll up the window until he made it to the underground lot and had the van parked next to its fellows.

Leaving the door open and the keys in the ignition, Fury told the startled attendant, “Good luck,” and stormed into the elevator.

The elevator doors closed and a red light came on above the retinal scanner. He leaned down to put his good eye to it and waited for the beep. “Fury, Nicholas J,” he snarled at the panel. “Office.”

Without so much as a jerk, the elevator started to move. He had ten whole floors of blessed silence before the intercom speaker crackled. He was so far beyond pissed that he didn’t even flinch when “The Song that Never Ends” started playing over the intercom. The door opened once on the twenty-seventh floor and the specialist took only one step toward the elevator before freezing. He looked at Nick’s face, cocked his head at the speaker, and stepped back.

“I’ll, uh…wait for the next one,” he said.

“Good choice,” Nick replied. The doors closed, and Nick waited in simmering rage for them to open on his floor.

Walking swiftly down the hall, Nick held his hand out and snapped his fingers as he approached his PA’s desk. “Phone,” he said, snapping his fingers again when the PA – a new one, Mark Sommers, 29, ex-CIA analyst- wasn’t quite fast enough. Mark got the new phone into his palm two seconds before Nick could fire him. Nick didn’t break stride as he stormed past the desk and into his office. Stark’s number was programmed in on speed dial 9, and Jarvis answered on the third ring.

“Hello, Director.”

“Is your dad home?” Nick asked through clenched teeth.

“Mr. Stark is currently unavailable, but asked me to pass on his gratitude for rerouting your calls to his personal cell last night.”

Unlocking his jaw before he broke his teeth, Nick said, “Alright. You got me, I got you, you got me again. Let’s cancel this before someone gets hurt.” What he really wanted to say was _you immature waste of a brain, you better stop fucking with me before I_ fuck you up _, do not engage a spy in a prank war._

“I’m afraid I do not understand, director,” Jarvis replied politely.

“Uh-huh. Stark, I know you’re listening to this, you call off your damn tech dogs, and you do it now, or I swear I will sic a city inspector on every business you own.” He hung up before Jarvis could respond and dropped into his chair, enjoying the quiet while it lasted. Stark wasn’t the kind to be intimidated by a city inspector, and Nick had probably just made it worse by threatening him, but _he_ wasn’t the kind to be cowed by annoying songs and missing underwear. What he couldn’t figure out was how Stark had gotten into his apartment. Stark was damn good at a lot of things, but stealth operations were not on his CV.

Pushing the intercom button, he called for Mark, more than half expecting the intercom to start blasting the damn song again. It didn’t, but the mere thought of the song started it playing in his head, and that was worse.

“Sir?” Mark asked, poking his head around the door.

Nick waved him forward. He braced his hands on his desk and pushed to roll back. He felt the wheels stick, but half a second too late. The chair went tumbling over, taking him with it. He rolled out of the way, ending up on his left knee, his right toes, and the fingertips of his left hand, right hand on his sidearm. Mark froze in the doorway and put his hands up, dropping stack of paper in the process and sending them scattering over the office floor.

Ignoring his PA, Nick dropped to both knees and yanked the chair over so he could see the wheels. They were covered in an adhesive tape that he recognized as one of FitzSimmon’s inventions – thin as ScotchTape, could hold up to twenty pounds on a vertical surface. Nick stood very slowly with his lips pursed.

“Forensics sweep,” he said in a low voice. “Right now. We’ll talk about how someone got into my office without you noticing later.”

“Y-Yes, sir!” Mark spun on his heel and rushed out of the office. Nick was being hard on the kid – he’d only been on duty for half an hour, and whoever was starting shit with him was also good enough to get into his apartment. That level of operation all but ruled out walking directly past his PA and saying good morning.

Crossing the office, Nick grabbed the string on the blinds and yanked them open. The muscles in his neck started twitching, little flickering spasms that traveled to his shoulders and down his spine.

“The forensics team is….” Mark trailed off as Nick continued to glare at the giant smiley face painted over the outside of his window in what looked like silly string. “On the way, director,” Mark finished weakly.

“Good morning, director,” Natasha Romanov greeted, striding into the room with a smile for Mark. The PA used the excuse to duck out the door and Natasha came to stand next to him. “Nice artwork.”

Nick looked at her sideways, putting all the puzzle pieces together. “Is this because of the goddamn cupcake at the Christmas party? I already told you I didn’t know it was yours.”

She gave him a bland look. “Seems like it would be a lot of effort over a cupcake.” Smiling, she handed him the stack of files cradled against her chest. “Have a nice day, director.”

“Sommers!” Nick shouted through the still-open door. He waited only until Mark’s face appeared in the doorway to order, “Call Baked and Wired and order a dozen red velvet cupcakes to be delivered to Avengers Headquarters.”

Obviously confused, Mark nonetheless answered a prompt, “Yes, sir,” and disappeared back through the door. Maybe he would make it another month after all.

“Over a goddamned _cupcake_ ,” Nick told the purple and blue smiley face. “A fucking _cupcake_.” He cracked a smile and turned to call over his shoulder, “And send Phil Coulson a fruit basket!”

Disobeying the order to kill Natalia Romanova was possibly the best gift anyone had ever given him. He was just happy she was usually on his side. What he was going to do about the prank war he’d unintentionally started with Tony Stark was another matter entirely.


End file.
